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But Rambourg isn’t convinced DRM even works, or that DRM and the piracy it purports to try and prevent are even related to one another in any meaningful way.

“Pirates remove the DRM from the games before they ever play them,” he tells me. “The people who have to put up with DRM are the very people who shouldn’t have to bother with it: legitimate customers.”

GOG.com (short for Good Old Games) is a digital distributor of both old and new PC titles. The site is a part of the Poland-based CD Projekt group, which also includes Witcher 2 developer CD Projekt RED.

The site is more than just a place to slake your nostalgia, though for anyone who played PC games back in the 80′s and 90′s it will certainly do just that with its catalog of classic titles.

You can find all sorts of games you might have played in the good old days—my beloved old Might & Magic games, for instance, which I own still but only on floppy discs for a long forgotten Mac operating system. Here, they’ve been remastered to work with modern operating systems.

Icewind Dale, Wizardry, Ultima…the list goes on and on.

I’ve even found more obscure titles like Blade of Darkness, a game every fan of Dark Souls should play to learn where that game drew its inspiration for combat. System Shock 2 came to the site around the same time as Ken Levine’s BioShock Infinite was launched, just so we could all compare Levine’s newer game with his classic.

A Brief History of CD Projekt and GOG.com

Founded by Marcin Iwinski and Michal Kicinski, CD Projekt started out as a retail game distributor in Poland in the 1990′s, not long after the fall of the Berlin wall.

“Back in those days,” Rambourg tells me, Poland’s economy “was rather fragile and piracy was the most popular channel for gamers to get a chance to play their favorite titles from the West.”

Hardware was also expensive, so many Polish gamers played older games that would run properly on older machines—older games that they tended to pirate. In order to get gamers to actually buy games rather than pirate them, CD Projekt struck upon a novel idea: make purchasing games convenient and affordable.

“They introduced a budget series of classic PC games to Polish gamers,” says Rambourg, “very often localized into their native language along with the game manual, beefed up with some goodies (stickers, posters, etc), in a nice-looking box, and for a very reasonable price.”

That series, Rambourg says, was a tipping point for many Polish gamers who decided to give “legal gaming” a try. It was a huge success for CD Projekt, not only garnering the respect and business of a number of new gamers, but helping them seal deals with publishers worldwide.

A decade later, with the rise of broadband internet and the increasing expense and competition in the video game industry, both piracy and the use of ever more invasive DRM were on the rise. So CD Projekt came up with the idea of GOG.com—a digital distributor modeled after the success of CDP’s earlier brick-and-mortar model.

GOG.com differs from its biggest competitor—Valve’s enormously successful Steam platform—in a number of ways. The site offers games at the same price worldwide with no regional pricing. Each game you purchase comes with digital goodies such as the game’s soundtrack, a digital manual, desktop wallpapers, and so forth.

The games are always remastered for modern operating systems as well, making them playable on new machines.

Perhaps most importantly, each and every title comes entirely DRM-free. This includes titles from many of GOG.com’s partners, such as Ubisoft, that you might not normally associate with DRM-free games.

A beta version of GOG.com was launched in 2008 with a few titles available from Interplay, the site’s first partner. The 2-year beta saw the signing of over 100 partners including big publishers and independent studios. GOG.com released nearly 500 classic games, reaching over 1.7 million gamers per month.

Then, in 2011 the site launched its first new title: CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 2, which sold 40,000 copies through GOG.com in its first three months. Valve’s much larger Steam platform sold 200,000 in the same time frame, but CDP viewed the event as a massive success. After all, GOG.com’s user base was far smaller and they still sold a fifth the number of units, and each one DRM free.

At this point, CD Projekt’s influence and respect had grown by leaps and bounds, to the point where the Polish Prime Minister gave president Obama a copy of The Witcher 2 as a gift on his visit to Poland.

The success of The Witcher 2 on GOG.com convinced the company ”to expand beyond just selling classic games and therefore sell new content as well,” says Rambourg. It’s also why they started offering some games on Mac OS X.

The DRM-free revolution had begun.

The DRM-free Revolution

Kickstarter is an interesting parallel to GOG.com’s success.

The games we see funding on Kickstarter would have a hard time funding through traditional channels, but gamers obviously have a deep hunger for these sorts of “new classic” games.

The spiritual successor to Planescape: Tormentpulled in over $4 million on the crowdfunding site. Obsidian’s CRPG Project Eternityraised nearly as much. Indeed, many of the developers whose classic games appear on GOG.com are now participating in the Kickstarter movement, and virtually every one of these promises a DRM-free version of their game.

Gamers are as hungry for an older way of doing business as they are for these classic games. Video game consumers have been hit hard with DRM, with always-online schemes, and with other industry decisions like day-one DLC and locked on-disc content that are rightfully seen as anti-consumer and short-sighted.

Witcher 3 Project Lead, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, told me recently that he believed DRM is the “worst thing in the video game industry.”

Rambourg describes DRM as reactionary, likening it to an allergic response. “A natural response,” he says, “but not a helpful one.”

The use of DRM signals a lack of trust between producers of games and their target consumers, says Rambourg. Worse, DRM can often break the game itself. Rambourg notes that nowadays “there are even games that require the gamer to be permanently connected to the internet to actually launch and play his favorite title.”

This isn’t just an inconvenience for people with poor internet connections, he points out. It’s bad for the longevity of games and the industry.

“It’s hard for the industry to think this way,” Rambourg says, “but consider this: if Zork I had an always-on internet connection requirement, do you think it would still be possible to sell the game 33 years later and have it work? It does work just fine on GOG.com, and the rights holders make revenue on this great old classic, but that’s because it’s not crippled with a short-sighted DRM policy. Of course, it wasn’t possible to use DRM like that back in the day, but I think it’s best for all of us who like seeing the classics that shaped gaming that it wasn’t.”

Always-online should be reserved for MMORPGs, Rambourg says, because large online games are built with an always-online internet connection in mind. It’s the point of this sort of game.

“However,” he says, “using an “always-online” feature for games that very much look and taste like single player titles is really a worrying trend to me and just like any short-sighted fasion out there, I hope it will just vanish in a near future.”

We’ve seen plenty of examples of always-online DRM breaking games already.

Diablo III not only had a botched launch, Blizzard’s latest action-RPG has no user mods thanks to its always-online nature. This stands in stark contrast not just with the previous Diablo games, but with the competition. Torchlight 2 is a modder’s paradise, and while it’s not quite the same type of game, CDP’s Witcher 2 recently had its own suite of modding tools released upon the world.

The music industry has already started to learn these lessons, Rambourg says. So have book publishers as DRM-free eBooks have become more and more common. Even Hollywood is starting to understand how damaging DRM can be to their products. In time, the video game industry will learn the same lessons—hopefully.

In the meantime, GOG.com and CD Projekt continue to grow.

One factor in GOG.com’s success is the relatively small team of just 45 employees, making it ”surprisingly easy to make most of our decisions: we think about what we would like a digital distribution store to do, and then try to do that.”

“We treat our gamers like humans,” he says, “not criminals—and I think this is why our community is so active and faithful.”

Like any relationship, fostering trust between a business and its customers is crucial, and CD Projekt and GOG.com have figured out how to cultivate trust and respect with a tough crowd: gamers. The video game industry should take note. Abandoning DRM may sound risky, but abandoning your customer base is a far greater threat to the bottom line. If anything, CD Projekt and GOG.com have illustrated how important service is to the video game industry, and how adding value and treating customers with respect can pay dividends.

Currently CD Projekt RED is working on their upcoming RPG The Witcher 3. GOG.com is busy bringing new games to their catalog, including the just-released Night of the Rabbit.

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They are are remarkably open to customer requests. Not just for games, but for patches and fixes old games may need that the community brings to their attention. Pretty much the best distributer out there imo.

I’ve been waiting forever for it to appear on Steam too and now there it is on GOG, great news! Severance: Blade of Darkness is a fantastic game. The atmosphere is on par with Souls series if not better. It was ahead of it’s time in graphics department too, those dynamic shadows were gorgeous. FROM really should implement some similar torch mechanics in Dark Souls II, it was perfect in BoD.

“Actually, our community wish list shows we have quite a bunch of LucasArts’ titles to sign next and we will do our best to satisfy our gamers. Heck, we just signed SS2 after all, so impossible is nothing for GOG! If you guys want to support us, make sure to vote in our community wishlist so that we can give more weight to all our ongoing and upcoming business talks. It worked for SS2, so it can work for other titles. I know that some people may think that voting in the wishlist doesn’t accomplish anything. I’m here to tell you it does”- Guillaume Rambourg source:http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/13/many-questions-system-shock-2-comes-to-gog/

Glad to see them moving into newer games. I don’t have a nostalgia for many old PC titles, but I’m willing to pay a few extra dollars for a GOG game when Steam or GreenMan is selling it cheaper because of the value I see in having control of it. Steam just feels slow, and I hate logging into some worthless GFWL or uPlay system. Then there’s Origin, the banana republic of the gaming world.

I recently bought Blood Dragon on Steam and the bonus uPlay system was so obnoxious I just pirated the leaked version and played that. Ubisoft got their $15 and I got to play a single player game the way developers meant for it to be played.

PC distribution is just a mess, except for GOG. GOG is simple, fast, and you get soundtracks. End of rant.

In an era where games developers seem to regard their customers as criminals until proven otherwise, CD Projeck has stood out as a bastion of common sense, good business management and treating customers with respect.

Other developers should sit up and take notice because this seems to have been noticed by the customer and rewarded with increasingly larger sales and support. According to the figures given on Wilkipedia CD Projecks Witcher 2 outsold EA/Bioware’s Mass Effect 3 – something that can only really be explained by word of mouth sales for The Witcher 2*.

The first Witcher game gives a very good idea as to how CD Projeck treats its customers. The original game had so many bugs it was all but unplayable, so CD RED went back and effectively reworked the entire game and then allowed those who’d registered a copy of the first version could pick up the updated one for no cost. All of the DLC was free, and the boxed version of the updated edition included a walkthrough, making of book, wallpapers ect for no extra cost. This was repeated with the Witcher 2 (Although they never had to rework that game).

It is worth comparing this to EA/BW’s Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3. Both were sold with ‘bonus’ items of questionable value and had some serious bugs (ME3′s bugs were fairly minor, DA2′s were game stopping and justified some retailers refunding customers on the basis that the game as sold was broken or defective). Both charged for every little bit of DLC, except for ME3′s expanded ending which was initially free – not that EA could have got away with charging for it at the time.

The difference is clearly in how these two companies are treating their customers. CD Projeck treats customers as intelligent individuals who want value for money, and relies on a good reputation and word of mouth to bring in new customers. EA seems to treat its customers as idiots who will give them money when asked, and relies on massive marketing campaigns to sell its products.

The results? CD Projeck RED goes from strength to strength while EA has been voted the worst company in America two years running.

You don’t have to be a genius to figure out which model is sustainable. Word of mouth sales cost you nothing but a good product (which is what you should be providing in the first place). Marketing costs you increasingly more and more money, especially should you end up getting a bad reputation, and is often useless once you get caught up in a lie as few people will believe a word you say after that.

I’m still skeptical about how well The Witcher 2 did. If you look at VGChartz, the Witcher 2 did a poor job in North America compared to Mass Effect 3. And while you can say VGChartz may not be that reliable, it’s the best NEUTRAL POV ranking, since the people providing the sales of TW2 with those high figures is GOG. The 4 million mark comes from CDProject.

I would never believe a publisher over an independent source. We need more of a Billboard ranking for sales.

The Witcher may well have sold fewer copies in the USA than Mass Effect 3, but globally it did just as well if not slightly better. In fact if you add in the cost of development and marketing The Witcher 2 is the ‘winner’ in terms of profit, since CD Projeck didn’t spend anything like as much money advertising their product as EA.

The problem here, and one that Hollywood in particular is notorious for, is releasing products globally but ignoring sales outside the USA. If you are not interested in sales outside the US then why make your product available in other countries? When you are dealing with games which can be downloaded over the internet this becomes doubly mystifying.

More than one big Hollywood blockbuster has only managed to make a profit due to overseas sales (usually Europe).

VGChartz is so inaccurate it’s actually worse than having no data at all. It’s not just a little unreliable, they pull numbers out of thin air. People from Aksys and XSEED have commented that if they had sold anywhere near what VGChartz said they did, they’d all be rolling in cash.

An unreliable independent source known for very poor estimates or a company that is in the best possible position to track every sale? Seems pretty clear cut which is superior.

I feel like the issue of piracy with digital entertainment is becoming a serious issue. The downside is there isn’t a good way to approach it yet. I feel like DRM is a failure too as games can still be hacked, and the DRM measures that have been used so far have been disastrous from Diablo 3 to Sim City.

I feel like the best way to punish pirates is the unique bugs that certain games have for illegal copies. For example in GTA 4, Niko is constantly drunk with the blurry screen if it’s a pirated copy. I think finding ways to screw up a pirate’s fun with a game by inserting bugs on purpose might be effective.

You’re still checking in on the game’s authenticity with an online DRM system. CDProjekt fixes the problem by building their games to be profitable based on a loyal fanbase at launch. They don’t fret over impossible sales to pirates.

GoG is a good company. However, their stunt they tried to pull about a year ago saying that they were shutting down was really dumb and scared a lot of their customers.

If they had instead told the truth and said “we are moving out of beta” then it wouldn’t have been a problem. However, I don’t think they lost a lot of customers over it (even if someone threatened to leave), and more importantly it garnered publicity.

It’s true that the “shut down” was a bad move, but it was almost four years ago. They have been very careful to not do anything like that since, all the while maintaining their communication with their customers to make sure customers (overall) like the direction GOG is going. I’ll admit to being upset at the time, but there hasn’t been a repeat since so in my mind it’s like it never happened. I love a company that learns from their mistakes.

I will say this about GOG. I love their business model but I’ve stopped shopping as much on their site simply because I find that my nostalgia for games is often greater then the actual game. Basically, I find it hard to play older games when I have newer games to play. The newer games don’t just have better graphics but it is amazing how much UI and controls have improved since back in the day. It is cool that they are starting to offer newer games as well as old games. I will have to pick up Witcher 3 from them when the time comes.

I’ve been on GOG since they were in beta. The site is awesome, prices are more than reasonable and there’s some great deals to be had. In the cases where there are multiple sources for a game, GOG gets my money even if they’re not the cheapest. Why I prefer getting games from GOG? Several reasons, but first and foremost is indeed that all their stuff is DRM-free and they don’t treat their users as criminals.

When it comes to old games, it’s actually more convenient to get it off of gog than pirate. It’s so good to finally have a legit version of system shock 2 without all the compatibility bullshit attached. I think Rambourg’s reasoning is valid, considering I’m behaving in the exact way he predicted I would. CD Brojekt’s service and the way they treat customers is so good that I would be ashamed of myself for ever pirating a CDPR game, let alone a game I could get on gog. However, pirating from, say, EA would not keep me up at night.

“Each game you purchase comes with digital goodies such as the game’s soundtrack, a digital manual, desktop wallpapers, and so forth.”

This is what I expect from online music artists (but rarely receive). I downloaded an album from Presto Classical and received a high-res scan of the 32 page booklet! and saved about 10 or so $NZ in the process. It’s really not asking for much from developers and distributors, and it saves me time trawling google images for a desktop as well. This could also extend to outside artists getting exposure by having their work included in the download – if not at launch, then perhaps further down the track.

This is also an interesting article in regards to “Always-Online DRM” and how game piracy even managed to save a lot of software and works from going extinct: http://technologizer.com/2012/01/23/why-history-needs-software-piracy/

A great site; I’ve bought (just checked) 47 games from them without even trying hard! What is wonderful is buying an old game just to try it out and falling in love with it (in my case, Darklands from 1992). It’s one of the huge strengths of the PC platform that you can do this.

“have figured out how to cultivate trust and respect with a tough crowd: gamers.” I don’t think we’re really all that tough, at least where distribution platforms are concerned. Just look at Steam: sure there are some who are against its mandatory DRM on principle, but its unobtrusive nature means that most are fine with it. And if people don’t love Valve quite as much as they used to, I think that’s mostly frustration about Half-Life 3 ;) It’s true that GoG goes above and beyond what Steam accomplishes, and we love them for it. But the only reason we seem like a tough crowd is that we’re usually treated like dirt.